Once your audit is complete, the next phase of your accessibility project requires weeks, if not months, of work from your team: You need to fix the issues and we need to validate them (or another auditor).
Here’s how to move your project forward faster (and beat your deadline) while saving valuable hours of developer time.
Table of Contents
After the Audit
After you receive your audit report, you’re looking at potentially dozens or even hundreds of accessibility issues that need to be fixed. This may feel like a burden that will take forever, but, if we take it in efficient chunks, we can complete the project in less time than you think.
One option is to continue with the project working from a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet will work just fine, but the next level to time-savings (and mistake prevention) is working through remediation using our Accessibility Tracker software. Once you have access to Tracker, here are the next steps:
- Upload your audit report into Accessibility Tracker
- Sort issues by one of two prioritization formulas:
- Risk Formula (prioritizes based on litigation data)
- Impact Formula (uses our 100-point weighted scoring system)
- Assign team members to specific issues
- Set up collaborative access for both your team and our validators
This transition phase transforms a potentially overwhelming spreadsheet into an organized, prioritized, and collaborative workflow. Your team now has clear direction on which issues to tackle first.
Setting Up Your Remediation Team
For effective remediation, you’ll need to involve several types of team members:
- Developers to handle code-related fixes (ARIA implementation, keyboard navigation, etc.)
- Designers for color contrast issues, focus indicator colors, and other design elements
- Content editors to address text alternatives, video captions, etc.
- Project managers to track progress and coordinate between teams
Accessibility Tracker allows you to assign specific team members to relevant issues based on their expertise, keeping everyone accountable and preventing issues from falling through the cracks.
The Fix & Validation Cycle
We recommend a 10-20% incremental approach to remediation, especially if your team is new to accessibility. This means working through approximately 15-20 issues (of varying types) initially, then submitting them for validation before continuing.
Here’s how the cycle works:
- Selection: Your team selects a batch of issues to fix, prioritized by either risk or impact
- Remediation: Developers and content creators implement the fixes
- Internal Review: Your team reviews the changes and marks issues as “fixed” in Accessibility Tracker
- Validation: Our technical experts validate the fixes
- Feedback Loop: For issues that aren’t fully resolved, we provide specific guidance
- Repeat: The cycle continues with the next batch of issues
This validation cycle prevents your team from making the same mistakes across multiple issues, which saves time and resources in the long run.
Documentation & Compliance Evidence
Throughout this process, Accessibility Tracker maintains a complete record of:
- When issues were fixed
- Who fixed them
- Validation confirmations
This documentation becomes invaluable for demonstrating compliance progress, especially for entities facing working through website accessibility lawsuit settlement agreements.
Accessibility Tracker can generate monthly progress reports that provide clear statistics on:
- Total accessibility issues identified
- Issues successfully remediated and validated
- Issues currently in progress
- Remaining issues prioritized by risk or impact
These reports serve as tangible evidence of your organization’s commitment to accessibility and create a clear record for compliance documentation.
Conclusion
The key to successful accessibility remediation isn’t just finding issues—it’s having a structured workflow to fix them efficiently and correctly. By implementing a systematic approach with Accessibility Tracker at its center, your organization can:
- Prioritize fixes based on legal risk or user impact
- Track progress
- Validate fixes to ensure the fixes have been made correctly
- Document compliance efforts
With our technical support hours included in the remediation process, you’re never left to figure out complex accessibility issues on your own. Our experts work alongside your team, validating fixes and providing guidance until your digital asset achieves WCAG conformance.
If you need help with an audit or would like to talk more about how Accessibility Tracker can help your team, we’re happy to help. Just send us a message and we’ll be right back with you.
